Lust for Life

Leading out of this excavation was a series of twelve minute black holes. Jacques shoved himself into one and shouted, “Follow me.” The opening was just large enough to pass Vincent’s shoulders. He jammed his way into it and crawled on his stomach like a snake, digging his way along with his fingernails and toes. He could not see Jacques’s boots, three inches ahead of him. The tunnel through the rock was only a foot and a half high and two and a half feet wide. The hole from which the passageway started had almost no fresh air, but it was cool compared to this stope.

At the end of the crawl Vincent came into a little domelike hollow almost tall enough for a man to stand up. The place was pitch black and at first Vincent could see nothing; then he noticed four little blue glows along a wall. His body was wet with perspiration; the sweat from his brow brought the coal-dust down into his eyes, making them smart cruelly. He was panting for breath from the long crawl on his stomach and stood up with a feeling of relief to catch a little air. What he caught was fire, liquid fire that burned and choked him as it went down his lungs. This was the worst hole in all Marcasse, a torture chamber worthy of the Middle Ages.

“Tiens, tiens!” cried a familiar voice, “c’est Monsieur Vincent. Have you come to see how we earn our fifty cents a day, Monsieur?”

Jacques went quickly to the lamps and inspected them. The arc of blue was eating up the light.

“He shouldn’t have come down here!” Decrucq whispered in Vincent’s ear, the whites of his eyes gleaming, “he will have a haemorrhage in that tunnel and then we will have to haul him out with blocks and a pulley.”

“Decrucq,” called Jacques, “have these lamps been burning this way all morning?”

“Yes,” replied Decrucq carelessly, “this grisou is growing day by day. Once it will explode and then our troubles will be over.”

“These cells were pumped out last Sunday,” said Jacques.

“But it comes back, it comes back,” said Decrucq scratching the black scar in his scalp with pleasure.

“Then you must lay off one day this week and let us clean it out again.”

A storm of protest arose from the miners. “We have not enough bread now for the children! It is impossible to live on the wages, let alone give up a full day! Let them clean it out when we are not in here; we must eat like all the others!”

“It’s all right,” laughed Decrucq, “the mines can’t kill me. They’ve tried it before. I shall die in my bed of old age. Speaking of food, what time is it, Verney?”

Jacques held his watch near the blue flame. “Nine o’clock.”

“Good! We can eat our dinner.”

The black, sweating bodies with the white eyeballs ceased their labours, and squatting on their haunches against the walls opened their kits. They could not crawl out into the slightly cooler hole to eat because they allowed themselves only fifteen minutes respite. The crawl going and coming would have taken almost that long. So they sat in the stagnant heat, took out two pieces or thick, coarse bread with sour cheese, and ate hungrily, the black soot from their hands coming off in great streaks on the white bread. Each man had a beer bottle of tepid coffee with which he washed down the bread. The coffee, the bread, and the sour cheese were the prize for which they worked thirteen hours a day.

Vincent had already been down six hours. He felt faint from lack of air and choking with the heat and dust. He did not think he could stand the torture very many more minutes. He was grateful when Jacques said they must go.

“Watch that grisou, Decrucq,” said Jacques before he plunged into the hole. “If it gets bad, you’d better bring your gang out.”

Decrucq laughed harshly. “And will they pay us our fifty cents for the day if we don’t produce the coal?”

There was no answer to this question. Decrucq knew it as well as Jacques. The latter shrugged, and crawled on his stomach through the tunnel. Vincent followed him, completely blinded by the stinging, black sweat in his eyes.

After half an hour of walking they reached the accrochage, where the cage took coal and men to the surface. Jacques went into a cave in the rock, where the horses were kept, and coughed up black phlegm.

In the cage, shooting upward like a bucket in a well, Vincent turned to his friend and said, “Monsieur, tell me. Why do you people continue to go down into the mines? Why don’t you all go elsewhere, find other employment?”

“Ah, my dear Monsieur Vincent, there is no other employment. And we cannot go elsewhere because we do not have the money. There is not a miner’s family in the whole Borinage that has ten francs put away. But even if we could go, Monsieur, we would not. The sailor knows that all sorts of dangers await him aboard his ship, yet, ashore, he is homesick for the sea. So it is with us, Monsieur, we love our mines; we would rather be underground than above it. All we ask is a living wage, fair working hours, and protection against danger.”